Feature photo: etrepum / All other photos by author

NOT UNTIL I started studying Korean in college did I learn that. East Asian culture permeates many areas of Northern Virginia and is easily accessible for Washingtonians eager to experience it. Here are some good places to start:

Lighthouse Tofu

Location: Annandale
Yelp review: http://www.yelp.com/biz/lighthouse-tofu-annandale

This understated restaurant serves a variety of soondubu — soft tofu soup. The interior décor may seem reserved, but it’s reminiscent of traditional restaurants found in Korea. Servers greet patrons with ice-cold barley water and the usual panchan (starter dishes).

After deciding which soondubu to order, you’ll also need to specify the desired level of spiciness; the restaurant offers five levels of heat for a customizable dish. Remember to crack the raw egg provided over the soup before digging in.

Honey Pig (Gooldaegee)

Location: Annandale
Yelp review: http://www.yelp.com/biz/honey-pig-gooldaegee-korean-grill-annandale

I find weekends best here as the place is more about the crowd and atmosphere than its food. Each table is equipped with a BBQ grill and covered with panchan. The loud modern American and Korean pop hits and soju (Korean vodka) make it one of the most enjoyable places to be on a Friday night as far as I’m concerned.

Two warnings for non-Koreans: communicating with the staff without a translator can be awkward, and the imported soju costs $10 a bottle.

Shilla Bakery

Location: Annandale
Yelp review: http://www.yelp.com/biz/shilla-bakery-annandale

Shilla Bakery has a great supply of unique Korean breads and goodies. Nothing’s too expensive, which makes for good sampling potential. Highlights for me are the yogurt bread, sugar donuts, tangy frozen yogurt, cakes, and bubble tea.

In line with Korean tastes, the bakery offers various red bean desserts as well, including one called red bean bingsoo (“Chinese ice cream”), which is a mixture of shaved ice, red beans, rice cakes, ice cream, and syrup.

Ara

Location: Annandale
Website: http://www.ararestaurant.com/

When I was new to the Korean scene, I was excited to dance the night away to my favorite K-pop songs at this much talked-about club. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, the Koreans at Ara aren’t the dancing type.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go. It’s lively on both weekends and week nights, and the overwhelmingly Korean crowd is enough to make one feel as if they’ve landed in downtown Seoul. The restaurant/club also has private karaoke rooms — best to book in advance.

Callanish Stones, Scotland / Photo: Donald Macleod

THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE in the UK celebrate solstice at Stonehenge twice a year, but this is only one of over 1,000 stone circles in Britain.

Maps of prehistoric Europe show how Stone Age humans traveled across the channel from mainland Europe into what is now southeast England, and then spread out to the north and west. The Megalithic and Beaker cultures dominated Britain two thousand years later, and they built the great stone structures that still grace the islands today.

Trips previously described sites in the Stonehenge and Avebury area. Just in time for Summer Solstice 2010, here are seven of the best of the rest from southwest to northeast.

1. Greywethers, Devon

Traveling southwest of Stonehenge to the Dartmoor National Park wilderness, you’ll find the double ring site of Greywethers.

The stone circles stand beneath Sittaford Tor, between tributaries of the North Teign and East Dart rivers, and the undeveloped surroundings allow you to imagine the cultures that used the stone circles for reasons lost in the centuries that have since passed.

There has been some restoration work on the circles, which are almost joined, with 49 grey granite stones altogether: 29 in the southern circle and 20 in the northern. The stones are three to four feet high, and both circles are just over 100 feet in diameter.

Photo: Le Petit Poulailler

2. Merry Maidens, Cornwall

Farther southwest, towards the tip of Land’s End, the Merry Maidens is a circle of 19 well-preserved, four-foot-tall stones in a 77-foot-diameter perfect circle, just off the B3315 road.

A legend, perhaps started by the early Christian church to control paganism, claims the stones are women punished with petrification for dancing on the Sabbath. The Merry Maidens are also called Dawn’s Men, thought to be a derivation of “Dans Maen,” or “Stone Dance” in Cornish.

Out of sight to the northeast are two more 12-foot stones that are the pipers of the legend, while a fiddler stone is visible from the circle to the west.

3. Rollrights, Oxfordshire

Northeast of Stonehenge, between London and Bristol on the Oxfordshire-Warwickshire border, are the Rollrights.

Seventy-seven stones make up the 103-foot perfect circle in a clearing in the woods. There is also a King Stone and the Whispering Knights burial chamber. These are said to be part of another petrification legend, involving a witch who tricked the King and turned him and his army into stone.

The King Stone is just over 200 feet northeast of the circle, across a road and the border with Warwickshire.

Photo: alancleaver_2000

4. Castlerigg, Cumbria

Beyond the rolling green hills and other notable areas of prehistoric activity in the north, Cumbria has two notable stone circles. Within the Lake District and surrounded by broad mountains is the Castlerigg circle. It’s thought to be one of the first stone circles built in Britain, and has space on its northern side for what may have been an entrance.

There are 38 quite large stones (the highest is about seven feet) creating a circle with a 90-foot diameter, and another 10 stones forming a rectangle within the circle. There’s also a mound inside the circle, probably for burial purposes.

The site seems strategically placed to get the best view possible, and sitting against one of the great stones on a sunny evening, I enjoyed the view south to the long flat mesa of Skiddaw and north to the sharp peak of Blencathra.

Photo: Joccay

5. Long Meg, Cumbria

Long Meg is the second outstanding site in Cumbria, and its circle is the third largest in England (after Avebury and Stanton Drew) at 359×305 feet.

On a hillside near Penrith, in the village of Rudston, Long Meg is an outlier stone standing 238 feet southwest of the circle, aligned with the mid-winter sunset. It is 12 feet high and overlooks the up to 60 “daughter” stones that form the circle.

Long Meg is also made of a different substance than the others — red sandstone — and has numerous Bronze Age spiral carvings visible on it.

6. Callanish, Outer Hebrides

Continue north through Scotland’s Highland mountains and across Loch Roag of the Outer Hebrides and you’ll come to the stones of Callanish, on the western side of the Isle of Lewis.

They stand in a cross shape rather than a circle, but this has nothing to do with Christianity, as they predate Christ by two thousand years. An inner circle has 13 big stones, with the largest 12 feet high, and a small chambered cairn.

Then there are about 40 other stones divided into four paths that provide approaches to the center from the cardinal directions.

Photo: goforchris

7. Brodgar, Orkney Mainland

Scotland’s other islands are home to the Ring of Brodgar and the Stenness Stones, two circles facing each other across Loch Stenness.

Brodgar is a true ring of 27 stones standing up to 15 feet high on a thin promontory between the Harray and Stenness lochs. Its 340-foot diameter gives it exactly the same size as Avebury’s two inner rings. The stones are set within a circular ditch about 10 feet deep and 25 feet across that was dug out of solid bedrock.

The surrounding area has many interesting sites, including the Stones of Stenness. Although only four stones are left standing out of the original circle, they are much bigger than those at Brodgar, with the highest about 19 feet.

For a comprehensive listing of ancient stone sites in the British Isles and Western Europe, check out the Stone Pages.

Community Connection

If you’re up in Scotland chasing stones, you could also try Hunting the (Other) Loch Monster in Morar, Scotland, and Boozing Through 5 Whisky Distillery Tours In Scotland. Their stargazing is supposed to be good, too.

Photo: paul bridgewater – www.londonmusicphotographer.com

ARRIVE IN GAIMAN, Argentina, and you’ll notice a few things seem culturally and geographically misplaced.

Streets bear the names of J.D. Evans and Abraham Matthews. The dragon-emblazoned flag of Wales flies prominently from local businesses, and signs are posted not only in Spanish but also in Welsh, a language otherwise encountered only in the British Isles.

The Welsh settlement in Argentina began in the 19th century, when the Argentine government promoted immigration from European nations. The leader of the Welsh contingent, Rev. Michael D. Jones, wanted to create a colony of Welsh culture and language outside of Wales, away from the influence of the English.

He settled on Patagonia because of its remote location and the incentive of 100 square miles of land along the Chubut River offered by the government of Argentina.

Jones had studied Welsh communities in the United States, but found they quickly assimilated and lost their ethnic and cultural identity. The isolation of Patagonia would help create an insulated community that would maintain its language and culture.

Photo: paul bridgewater

Traditional tea in Gaiman

What brings many visitors to Gaiman, the cultural center of Argentina’s Welsh community, are the teahouses.

The full afternoon tea experience, much like one you could have in Britain, is served at tables covered in lace cloth with a large pot of tea and an assortment of cakes, marmalade, butter, and cream. The most traditional cake is the torta negra, a black cake similar to a fruitcake.

Every October, the town holds a Eisteddfod de Chubut, a Welsh cultural festival featuring performances of poetry and music in Welsh and Spanish, continuing a tradition that began in the province in 1875.

More Wales in Northern Patagonia

Elsewhere in Chubut province, remnants of Argentina’s Welsh settlement exists in windmills, chapels, and teahouses, as well as the Celtic names of its towns.

In nearby Trelew, the main commercial center in the region, the Museo Regional Pueblo de Luis, housed in a former train station, documents the history of the Welsh settlement and features photographs and belongings of the settlers. It was in Trelew that the Welsh settlers built the Salon San David, a replica of St. David’s Cathedral in Pembrokeshire.

The regional railway once linked Trelew with the town of Dolavon, another early Welsh settlement, where an old flour mill has been converted into a museum of rural life, and a monument pays tribute to the indigenous Tehuelche who aided the settlers when they arrived.

Photo: paul bridgewater

Over near the Chilean border, just south of Esquel, the town of Trevelin was established in 1889 by John Evans, who was instrumental in exploring the upper Chubut Valley for Argentina.

The town’s first settlers arrived here after having built towns along the way as they traveled inland from the coast. The main attraction is the grave of Malacara, the horse that made a heroic leap to save Evans’ life during a Tehuelche attack.

At the site of the first mill built by the settlers after their arrival is the Museo Regional Molino Viejo, which depicts life in early 20th century Trevelin.

While the prevalence of the Welsh language has declined since the early 20th century, it is still taught in schools and university students have the opportunity to study abroad in Wales.

Chubut is also a destination for scholars from Wales seeking to study manuscripts from the original settlers and expose themselves to what is considered the pure form of the language.

Getting to Gaiman

Travelers often base themselves in the coastal city of Puerto Madryn, popular for its whale and penguin watching tours, although some choose to stay in Trelew. There are B&B accommodations available in Gaiman — make reservations.

From Puerto Madryn, catch a bus to Trelew, where you can board a connecting bus that will drop you off in the center of Gaiman. The town is compact and easy to navigate on foot.

Photo: aokettun

Where to have tea

Ty Gwyn, which also operates as a B&B, is the oldest Welsh teahouse in Gaiman and is run by a descendant of the original settlers. The staff, dressed in traditional Welsh clothing, provides attentive service. 9 de Julio 111, Gaiman

Ty Nain is also run by descendants of some of the town’s first Welsh settlers. Make sure to check out its small museum, which showcases artifacts from colonial days. Hipólito Yrigoyen 283, Gaiman

Another of Gaiman’s B&Bs, Plas y Coed doubles as a teahouse and provides large and filling breakfasts and afternoon tea. MD Jones 123, Gaiman

Located on the banks of the Chubut River, Ty Cymraeg has owners that sometimes share with visitors stories of their Welsh ancestors, whose photographs decorate the walls of the teahouse. Abraham Mathews 74, Gaiman

Community Connection

For more suggestions on classic places to have tea, check out Six Cups: Tea Cultures Around the World.

Coso Petroglyphs, China Lake Naval Weapons Station. Photo by Bill Becher for the New York Times

Just before the new year, while waiting for some minor patchwork to be done on our rented plastic land yacht, the crew and I took a stroll along the sandy paths of Rinconada Canyon, on the western fringe of Albuquerque, New Mexico, at Petroglyph National Monument. Having spent a day with Dr. Whitley back in November, in California, perusing a much larger and (generally) older collection of rock art deep inside a Navy bombing range, I wanted to see how these images compared.

Beckett and Oli at Rinconada Canyon. Photo by Luli Vela Page.

The day was fine—still and warm, with plenty of that sidelong supernatural light so celebrated in Southwestern painting and photography. We found desiccated millipedes, owl pellets, coyote scat, piles of windworn bottleglass, rusted beer cans from the days before pop tabs, and a bright, safety-yellow BB much coveted (and promptly lost) by the 2-year-old in the bunch.

We didn’t make it far into the canyon. We never got beyond the sound of traffic rushing along Unser Boulevard, or the views across the subdivision roofs to downtown and the airport beyond. We never got out from under the high-tension power lines.

Still, we saw a fading array of very old images chiseled into the black-varnished basalt: lizards, turtles, bird’s feet, spirals, and stick-figure medicine men in horned headgear. Most, we had read, were made by “Ancestral Pueblo peoples” between 400 and 700 years ago. But there were also Christian crosses, presumably made by Spanish colonists as early as the 16th Century. And other images that may be as old as 3,000 years before the present.

Signs from those who came before. Photo by Nico Page.

The Park Service doesn’t like the term “Rock Art.” “The images are more than just art,” runs the argument. “In fact, Native American languages generally do not have words that describe things in artistic terms.” Nor are they (the images) to be seen as graffiti.

What it’s all about, and why people chose these places in particular to carve their “glyphs,” are questions roundly debated by today’s ethnographers and archeologists, and of course rich fodder for the imaginings of those with an interest in what came before us.

“Anytime you’re dealing with iconography from another culture it’s fertile ground for people’s ideas to run amok,” says Whitley. “Of course we’ve got people who are adamant that this rock art was made by aliens.”

For his part, Whitley thinks these images are nothing less than windows into the origins of human creativity and religion, phenomena which happen to be coincidental, he says, with the historical emergence of the gene for what we now call bi-polar disorder. For more about that, check out his latest book, Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit.

We played in the sand, ate leftover Christmas ham, tortilla chips and baby carrots. We watched the steady procession of local families making their way up the trail, posing for pictures and climbing on the rocks. Then we boarded our rattletrap vessel and disappeared into an approaching storm, leaving only footprints and a large quotient of carbon compounds as evidence of our passage.

Petroglyph N. M. provides a pleasant and easily-accessed introduction to the genre. But after so many decades of love and abuse, and with the ubiquitous intrusions of the contemporary world, it’s easy to see how hard it is to preserve places like these, and why this one doesn’t make Dr. Whitley’s top 5.

Here are the sites that do, in no particular order:

1. The Coso Rock Art District, China Lake Naval Weapons Station, Eastern California

From Bill Becher’s NY Times slideshow.

With as many as 100,000 images dating as far back as 16,000 years before the present, the Coso District is considered the greatest concentration of petroglyphs in the Western Hemisphere.

Thanks to its location inside what is now the U.S. Navy’s premiere weapons testing range deep in the Mojave desert, in what Whitley calls “one of the most desolate places in North America”—it is also one of the best preserved sites on the planet.

It’s not a World Heritage Site—yet—but Whitley believes it meets the criteria, and that it should be. It’s been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1946. “In the big scheme of things,” says Whitley, “this is one of those that people should see.”

Tours are available to civilians (U.S. citizens only, alas) through the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest or by special arrangement through the Navy’s public affairs office.

2. Barrier Canyon, Utah

Barrier Canyon, now generally called Horseshoe Canyon, lies deep within the rugged Maze District of Canyonlands National Park, once a favorite hideout for the likes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Check out the Canyonlands National Park Map.

Archeologists have recovered artifacts from the canyon dating as far back as 9,000 B.C, when the place was still teeming with mammoths and giant bison. Most of the artwork, which Whitley calls “austere and enigmatic, but also an example of shamanistic aesthetic mastery,” is thought to have been made during the Late Archaic period, from 1,500 to 4,000 years ago.

The Great Gallery. Photo: Scott Catron

The work of the Barrier Canyon people is exceptionally well preserved, in part because of the dryness of the climate, but also because access to the site is no small undertaking.

According to the Park Service, most contemporary visitors make the approach from the west rim trailhead, via a long stretch of graded dirt road from either Moab or Green River, Utah. The hike into the Great Gallery, through cottonwood groves along an intermittent stream, between sheer pink sandstone walls, is 6.5 miles round-trip, down and then back up again.

The only camping available is on the rim itself. No dogs are allowed in the canyon. Bring your own water.

3. Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain

One day in 1994, a team of French cavers happened upon what is now considered the oldest rock art ever found, in the Chauvet Cave, near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in the Ardèche region of southern France. For better or worse (better, it seems), the place has ever since been locked down to all but the most dedicated (and credentialed) scientists.

Lascaux II. Photo by Jack Versloot, Flickr

European paleolithic (or “Stone Age”) rock art is famous not only for its age but for its full-blown aesthetic mastery—and for its profound influence on the likes of Picasso, who visited the original caves at Lascaux in 1940 and famously emerged saying of modern art that “We have discovered nothing.”

“The ‘Chinese horse’ at Lascaux,” says Whitley, “is in every intro to art history book.”

Of the 350 documented cave art sites across Europe, from Gibraltar to the Urals, Lascaux (in the Dordogne) and Altamira (in Cantabria, near Santander) are generally considered the best. Both are World Heritage Sites. Both are considered severely endangered.

The original cave at Lascaux was closed to the public in 1963 because of visible CO2 damage from more than 20 years of heavy visitation. A replica was opened in 1983, dubbed Lascaux II, which Whitley says is “still worth the visit.” The original paintings are now being irreparably consumed by mold.

The caves at Altamira, said to represent “the apogee of Paleolithic cave art across Europe,” are also said to be better preserved. Still, while means of preservation are being studied, they too are off-limits to visitors. Meanwhile, check out the museum, with its replica caves, cultural exhibits, and restored native parkland.

4. Drakensberg, South Africa

Bushman rock art, courtesy Antbear Guest House.

The rock art of the now-extinct San people, or bushmen, is considered by the World Heritage folks to be “the largest and most concentrated group of rock paintings in Africa south of the Sahara, outstanding both in quality and diversity of subject.”

Between Royal Natal and Bushmans Neck, in the vast uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park of South Africa’s Drakensberg, or “Dragon Mountains,” there are over 20,000 individual pictographs at 500 different sites, documenting 4,000 years in the lives of the bushmen, before they were exterminated in conflicts with the Zulu and white settlers.

Whitley’s favorite spots are the Game Pass Shelter, at Kamberg, and the Main Cave at the Giant’s Castle Nature Reserve, also popular with baboons, Eland antelope, and bearded vultures.

5. Valcamonica, Northern Italy

Valcamonica is a broad valley at the base of the Central Alps in eastern Lombardy, home to an enormous complex of ancient engravings—perhaps as many as 300,000 individual carvings dating from 10,000 years ago to the rise of the Roman Empire in the first century B.C.

Val Camonica. Photo: Luca Giarelli, Wikimedia Commons

“This is non-shamanistic art made by Neolithic and Bronze age farmers,” says Whitley, pointing out that these images were etched by the compatriots of Otzi the Ice Man, whose 5,300-year-old mummified corpse was found by two German hikers in 1991, immediately above Valcamonica.

Across the valley there are eight separate reserves and parks dedicated to rock art, including the Parco Nazionale delle Incisioni Rupestri di Naquane in Capo di Ponte.

Community Connection

For more petroglyphs on yet another continent, check out 15 Things You Can’t Miss in Australia.

For more contemporary wall-based work, check out 10 Places Where Graffiti is Legal.

Have you been to any of these places? Why were these sites chosen over all others? Oh, and what does it all mean? Give us a shout below.

Photo: Marcel Masferrer Pascual

For two days (this year October 3-4), Taybeh is host to Palestine’s Oktoberfest — a celebration of Palestinian music, culture, and…well, beer. Taybeh is a Christian village in the West Bank, 35 kms north of Jerusalem and home to the now international Taybeh Brewery.

Wha…who…how?

The Taybeh Brewery was founded in 1994 by Nadim Khoury, who first began brewing his own suds in the late ’70s while studying at Boston’s Hellenic College. Besides the region’s Jewish-Arab conflict, Mr. Khoury also had to contend with the fact that 95% of his potential customers were Muslim, a faith that prohibits alcohol consumption.

Obviously, the quality speaks for itself. Today, Taybeh beer is brewed under license in Germany (it conforms to the purity law 1516) for the European market. In Japan, the brew has a loyal following and you can even find it in Jerusalem on tap at some bars.

Fifth edition

This year’s Okotoberfest is the fifth annual event and one that brings together Israelis and Palestinians as well as international tourists. Tens of thousands partake in the festival, where you can eat local foods and buy products like olive oil, honey, and cakes as well as crafts made by local artisans.

If you’re in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv at the time, you can organize a tour to Taybeh for both days of the festival. Complimentary tours of the brewery are also given. Call ahead if you’re in a large group (02-289-8868).

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

For some reading on this conflicted region, check out Waging Peace: Israeli Mother and Palestinian Soldier Unite and Bullets and Backpackers: Political Tourism Hits the West Bank.

If you’re more keen on the traditional Oktoberfest in Munich, make sure you read A First Timer’s Guide to Oktoberfest.

1. The small Amazonian town of Parintins is reached from Manaus via a 20-30 hour boat trip…or a one hour plane ride.

2. The population of Parintins is 100,000. During the 3-day Boi Bumbá festival the population doubles as visitors arrive from all over Brazil, creating a colourful mix of local culture and burgeoning tourism.

3. Everybody in the town gets involved in the event in some way – even if they have to be at work.

4. A pre-party in the main square soon draws out the town’s most enthusiastic dancers.

5. A tropical lunchtime downpour does nothing to dampen spirits.

6. By the afternoon downtown Parintins is ablaze with colour, music, food, and dancing.

7. Street dancers leap to the sounds of a live band in Parintins as the town gets ready for a weekend of huge celebrations.

8. The festival’s roots go back around a hundred years. The blue team (the upper-class Caprichosos) fight against the red team (the working-class Garantidos). Parintins is the only place in the world where the Coca Cola sign is blue, a direct result of the sensitive division of the town’s color-driven rivalry.

9. Each team has 2-3 hours per night to outdo their opponent in terms of exuberant costumes, retelling of folkloric legends centered around a bull (boi), and, of course, beautiful singers and dancers. The “bombodrome” is open to tour groups before the event begins. Here you can get an insight into the madness to come as you walk amidst giant colourful trees and flamboyant, outsized creatures.

10. The stadium (“bombodrome”) is packed out by 8pm. Finally, a year’s buildup of tension, secrecy, and passionate rivalry is unleashed.

11. Many of the costumes and designs are so wildly imaginative they take many months to make and are different each year. This giant female face emerged from a traditional Amazonian house whose walls were made up of costumed people that dispersed fluidly in a show of virtuoso choreography.

12. Just when you think things can’t get more outrageous, a giant green man appears, almost as tall as the stadium, sprouting a slightly smaller baby-creature from above his head. You don’t need shamanic hallucinogenics to have a trippy time in the Amazon.

13. And what should leap from the green baby-creature when it reaches the ground? Why, a beautiful woman dressed in vivid animal feathers of course.

14. After a stunning performance from Caprichoso, the red team (Garantido) rolls out giant puppets to intimidate their opponents, impress the judges, and drive their supporters wild.

15. One of the final Garantido beauties shows her stunning snow-white plumage to the crowd. While Boi Bumbá isn’t widely known internationally, it’s the second largest festival after Rio Carnival, and is every bit as wild.

Community Connection

See more of Paul’s images from the Brazilian Amazon in Photo Essay: An Amazon Adventure.

Photo: Ken Lund

The L.A. Times’ online travel section recently published a list of trivia on Mt. Rushmore, the U.S. national memorial featuring the faces of four American presidents carved into a granite cliff in South Dakota’s Black Hills.

Intended to share various fun facts on a national icon, the list includes entries such as:

Photo: StuSeeger

* George Washington has the longest nose of the four.
* Ninety percent of the carving work was carried out with dynamite.
* Thomas Jefferson was originally positioned on Washington’s right, but this face was blown up and a new one carved between Washington and Roosevelt.

Yet, the article also relates a few obscure historical points about the monument that raise eyebrows in a different way:

1. The lead sculptor may have been a member of the KKK.

Gutzon Borglum was the man charged with creating the monument in 1927.

Photo: Peter Kaminski

However, immediately prior to this, he had been laboring on a different project: the Confederate Memorial Carving on Stone Mountain, Georgia.

This is the largest bas-relief in the world and depicts Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and “Stonewall” Jackson.

Its construction was funded in large part by Georgia’s Ku Klux Klan.

Though Borglum didn’t finish the job, he became pretty chummy with KKK leaders during his time at Stone Mountain, and his experiences there directly influenced his work on Mt. Rushmore.

2. The Black Hills are stolen land.

In 1868, the U.S. government signed a treaty with various American Indian peoples guaranteeing Indian ownership of the Black Hills forever. Just nine years later the government took back the land (there’s a term for that, isn’t there?) following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills.

In other words, a proud monument commemorating heroes of American democracy sits on land acquired through lies.

Photo: KimonBerlin

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the Black Hills had been illegally seized and ordered the federal government to pay $105 million to the American Indians still residing in the region.

The money was refused.

What’s more, on another cliff just 17 miles from Rushmore, a new monument is slowly taking shape. Its subject is Crazy Horse, the famous Oglala Lakota leader.

Progress is slow, due to the desire of those involved to avoid using government funds. But when completed, it will be nearly 10 times as tall as Mt. Rushmore — the largest statue in the world.

More than a monument

If you’re one of the 3 million visitors to Mt. Rushmore this year, make sure to keep the above “trivia” in mind.

Like any travel destination, there’s more here than meets the eye.

Community Connection

Rapid City, South Dakota, isn’t just the gateway to Mt. Rushmore, but also to Pristine America.

If you get fired up on history, you’ll enjoy these other Matador titles:
10 Key Destinations For The Historical Time Traveler
How to Take a Foreign History Crash Course in 5 Steps

Photo: bloomsberries

Cruising Houston’s Bellaire Blvd, Adriana and I watched as the English and Spanish of storefront signs gave way to Chinese and Vietnamese.

We pulled into one of the shopping centers lining the street, and found ourselves before an imposing Asian supermarket, wedged between a Halal Chinese restaurant and a Korean tofu and barbecue joint.

***

As the fourth largest city in the U.S., Houston enjoys the diversity of its counterparts around the country. In addition to Latino and African-American populations, the city is home to a growing Asian-American community, who began arriving in the 1870s.

Photo: Shayan (USA)

An original Chinatown was located on Smith Street, near the present-day Alley Theatre, but the city’s growth prevented the neighborhood from expanding.

Today, 9% of Houston’s 2.2 million are Asian American, roughly twice the national average.

Bellaire Blvd lacks the history of the Chinatowns etched into major cities such as San Francisco and New York. Rather, it resembles San Diego’s Convoy St, lined with young businesses that showcase the area’s Asian heritage.

***

Photo: KaiChanVong

Making our way past Shanghai- and Szechuan-style eateries, we singled out a dim sum restaurant and joined several parties waiting to be seated. The chatter of Cantonese, Mandarin, and even Tagalog filled the close entry room, with not a Texas drawl to be heard.

Glancing over the menu of porridge, dumplings, and rice noodle rolls, I could already imagine the taste of neatly wrapped, translucent har gow, slippery cheung fun, and crisp, deep-fried sesame balls.

In multicultural Houston, there’s much more to the local cuisine than BBQ and Tex-Mex.

Community Connection:

All you Chinatown aficionados out there, how many of Trips’ 8 most colorful Chinatowns have you visited? Share your answer in the comments!

Photo: Jason Walley, Illustrations: Aya Padrón

Okay, 10 points if you answered “colonists who remained loyal to the British during the American Revolution.” Maybe you even knew that a lot of them immigrated to Canada after 1776.

But Black Loyalists? If you’re like me, you have no idea.

The history

As it turns out, the best place to learn about this chapter in American history isn’t in America at all, but along the southwest coast of Nova Scotia. That’s where boatloads of Loyalists arrived in 1783 to start a new life and keep themselves under the British flag.

Among them were a few thousand African Americans, mostly escapees of Southern slavery who’d fought with the British during the war. For their service, they were transported with everyone else to the area around modern Shelburne, Nova Scotia.

This promising start immediately dissolved into racial inequality. Blacks were forced from Shelburne and made to settle in nearby Birchtown. The Nova Scotian government, in charge of parceling out land and supplies to the Loyalists, put white families at the head of the list and left residents of Birchtown to fend for themselves through the brutal Maritime winters.

After nine years of this, they’d had enough. Most of the surviving Black Loyalists hopped a trans-Atlantic ship and resettled in Sierra Leone. Those that remained faced continued mistreatment and injustice, and only recently has their story gotten airtime.

The place

Plenty of physical reminders of the past can be found in Birchtown…if you know where to look. Start at the Black Loyalist Heritage Society Historical Museum—the only town structure visible from the dilapidated stretch of Highway 3 that passes through it. Though small and clearly underfunded, its handful of exhibits are nonetheless poignant.

From the museum, a short path cuts through mosquitoy woods, past simple stone structures the first settlers built for shelter. The trail ends at Birchtown Bay, next to the Baptist church and a memorial plot believed to have been the village’s burial place.

One inlet over, but worlds apart, sits Shelburne, now a terribly quaint tourist stopover on the coast’s Lighthouse Route. The campground of Islands Provincial Park is located between the two towns—an excellent base for visiting both.

For more on this forgotten story, click over to these Nova Scotia archives.

Community Connection:

You’ve got questions, and we have answers. Travel queries on eastern Canada — Nova Scotia in particular — should be directed to deva, Matador’s expert on the region.

And if you liked this post, keep the knowledge rolling with “Black History Year: 7 Spots to Keep Learning Year Round.”

Photo: avlxyz

The close, dark store smells of garlic, chilies, maybe a little ginger. Racks overflow with instant noodle cups and bags of shrimp chips. In my hands a six-pack of kimchi ramen and a tray of freshly made tteok (Korean glutinous rice cakes).

I walk up to the counter, fumble in my pocket, and pluck out a wad of worn peso bills, still mesmerized by my discovery of this genuine, expansive Korean community lodged in the center of Mexico City’s tourist district—the Zona Rosa.

Destinations

Community Connection to Mexico

Koreans first came to Mexico in the early 1900s, fleeing the Japanese occupation of their homeland. Many found tough, low-paying work on farms in the country’s northern regions, where pockets of Mexicanized Korean communities still exist.

But Mexico City’s Koreans are more recently arrived, the result of South Korea’s economic boom of the ‘60s and ‘70s. In the D.F., traditions intertwine.

You’re almost as likely to find your mouth watering at the scent of bulgogi as tacos al pastor in the Zona Rosa.

While no immediately observable synthesis has taken place (you can’t get kimchi tacos here like those served up by Los Angeles’ Kogi truck), strolling down Calle Florencia between Reforma and Chapultepec makes for a culturally disorienting experience.

Community Connection

For more on Mexico City’s Korean community, check out the Matador Travel blog “Los Coreanos.” Curious what else you don’t know about the largest metropolis in the world? Give our “Green Guide to Mexico City” a read.